Meriden England – May 2013
From the Queens Head the route ascended steps, crossed a main road, passed through a gate and headed on uphill. Many spirits had passed that way; Thomas Pennant, a Welsh travel writer was drawn through the sloughs there by horses in 1780 on his way from Chester to London, prompting him to comment on the apt derivation of the 16th century name given to the place: ‘Myre-den’ meaning ‘dirt bottom’. Today it claims to be the centre of England and is known as Meriden. The going was on grassy clay, and the ascent drew beads of perspiration from my brow on that sunny morning, the start of my fourth day of walking. The track was part of the Heart of England Way that runs for one-hundred miles south from Cannock Chase in Staffordshire to Bourton on the Water in the Cotswolds. Spirits from the past accompanied me on the modest climb; they reside everywhere we walk: it’s thought that Lady Godiva of nakedness and horseback fame, founded the originally-thatched Norman church of St. Laurence in these parts in 1147. As I climbed I passed through muddy gateways. A rabbit darted from trees and scampered away and some inquisitive cows followed me up to the churchyard. The ground was smothered in bluebells, and the more recent graves were tidy and decorated with flowers. I left through a gate, and by a stone wall I read a plaque about the trail I was walking; it was part of a much longer E2 European route, and I wondered if anyone had ever walked its entire length.
There were, I discovered from the internet, eleven European walking routes, with a twelfth planned. Could I walk the entire length of one of these trails? It was something I thought I could do that perhaps nobody else had attempted.
